Leadership

Vendasta was formed in January of 2008 and quickly drummed up $3 million in venture capital funding later that summer. After acquiring another $8.25 million of funding in 2013, we grew from a handful of developers to a 200+ strong team working at a landmark location in downtown Saskatoon. This success has come under the leadership of Vendasta’s executives.

Brendan King

Chief Executive Officer

Intense, boisterous, imaginative. Brendan King, co-founder and CEO of Vendasta Technologies, is the innovative force of the company. Responsible for providing the vision, thought leadership and business strategy, it is Brendan’s ability to focus on the big picture while maintaining quality on the finest details that facilitates Vendasta’s success. Prior to co-founding Vendasta, Brendan proved his worth through many business ventures, including founding two other successful companies, one of which was nationally franchised. He also provided the entrepreneurial force behind Point2 Agent, a real estate software, where he grew its membership to over 165,000 agents and brokers in 85 countries. Brendan and Vendasta are almost synonymous. Both are governed by four core values: drive, innovation, respect and agility. Brendan is extremely passionate about upholding these core values while leading Vendasta down a path of innovation to become the number one provider of essential brand management products.

Jeff Tomlin

Chief Marketing Officer

Jeff Tomlin is a visionary in all things marketing, SEO, business strategy and digital. As a co-founder of Vendasta, Jeff’s passion and innovative nature drives the success of the business. While conducting market research and business analysis, Jeff is always measuring and analyzing the effectiveness of the marketing efforts. He is constantly developing and iterating marketing and PR plans, seeking out the most effective paths. In working with channel partners to help their business clients to grow revenue with digital media solutions, strengthen traditional media assets and develop digital sales strategies, Jeff is known to many of America’s top media companies. Prior to co-founding Vendasta, Jeff was the VP of strategy and business development at Point2, where he helped grow a real estate platform from the ground to power over 185,000 agents in 84 countries.

George Leith

Chief Revenue Officer

George is responsible for business development with Vendasta’s large media partners, as well as managing our in-house sales team. A digital interpreter, George has preached the gospel of online reputation management directly to the local businesses of hundreds of cities across North America. He translates his knowledge of the digital landscape into accessible information for those still stuck in the rut of traditional media. With nearly three decades of experience in marketing, sales and promotion, George is a highly compelling speaker, always in demand across North America — vital content and emphatic delivery are combined for an enlightening presentation. George’s expertise in sales, training, networking, management and marketing comes from the numerous executive and ownership positions he has held across multiple media and service related businesses. His track record of success is continued here at Vendasta.

Dale Hopkins

Chief Technology Officer

Dale is a technical visionary with a passion for the big picture. A constant forger of new ideas, his deep understanding of system-level programming equips him with the right skills to strengthen Vendasta’s reputation as a world leader in distributed applications using cloud-based infrastructure. He also brings an entrepreneurial background to the table—having co-founded LucidHelix Solutions in 2008, a company that specialized in diagnostic software for digital television networks—along with an Engineering Physics degree and over twelve years experience as a developer and architect. He revels in large-scale thinking and hands-on prototyping, and spends most of his time identifying new technologies that push our limits, lower our costs and continue to ensure Vendasta is the number one workplace for Canadian software developers.

Jacqueline Cook

Chief Strategy Officer

Jacqueline is responsible for driving a growth mindset throughout Vendasta. She encourages alignment, focus and execution cross-functionally with Engineering, Design, Product Management, Operations, Marketing, Sales, Support and Success. She leads Vendasta’s internationalization strategy and analyzes key customer insights and trends in order to feed back throughout the rest of the organization. Jacqueline is an alumnus of The Next 36 Entrepreneurial Institute, Canada’s premier entrepreneurial leadership initiative. During the program, she co-founded and was CEO of Triumf Mobile Rewards: a tablet and Smartphone-based platform for small and medium-sized businesses to customize their own loyalty rewards programs. She has been a speaker at events such as TEDx UofS and WE DAY 2015, and has represented Canada at the 2010 G8 and G20 Summits, the 2010 APEC Summit in Japan, and at the 2011 G20 Young Entrepreneur Summit in France.

Ed O’Keefe

EVP, Marketplace

Heading up Vendasta’s Marketplace, Ed powers mass sales channels of thousands of reps with a breadth of innovative products. Anticipating innovations for forthcoming problems, he has successfully owned and built organizations in both large media and start up environments. Having lived and operated some of these ventures internationally, Ed is a lead strategist in Vendasta’s internationalization blueprint, forging essential relationships in North America, Europe and further. An ambitious visionary who’s passion is rivalled only by his keen sense of business acumen, Ed has long been a pioneer in the digital advertising ecosystem. Aligning pertinent vendors, a rapidly growing salesforce and Vendasta’s vision is not only Ed’s job, but what he is resoundingly passionate about.

John Jordan

EVP, Partner Development

John’s own partnership with Vendasta spans several years through his work with the McClatchy Company. He led McClatchy’s digital revenue efforts as Director of Digital Revenue Development, from 2012 until January 2018, where he now joins the Vendasta team. John has been a passionate advocate for digital transformation. In his role at McClatchy, he worked with the company’s many newspapers to reshape the sales division with a focus on driving double-digit digital revenue growth.
John brings three decades of experience in the newspaper industry with him to Vendasta. He has been at the forefront of the digital journalism transformation ever since he launched The Salt Lake Tribune online in 1993. He is excited to extend that reach, and help countless partners reap the benefits of going digital.

Nathan Poellet

VP, Platform

Driving a culture of innovation and continuous improvement, Nathan is an advocate for true collaboration across all functions—design, engineering and strategy. With a true passion for Vendasta’s vision and the challenges in the local media space, he is constantly testing assumptions in the field, demanding exceptional work from his team and taking mitigated risks. Rapidly testing and evolving even quicker, Nathan’s technical prowess is essential in developing Vendasta’s world class platform and realizing the vision of being the #1 platform for selling digital solutions to local businesses.

Leadership Team

The executive team exists within a larger leadership and management group of thirty people at Vendasta. This team has been responsible for ideation, development and commercialization of Vendasta’s core small and medium business products, as well as Vendasta’s customer lifecycle management platform.